As the pressure to feed more people grows alongside the urgency of reducing our environmental footprint, we talk to the scientists attempting to maximise our crop yields without increasing our environmental impact.
We look at how genetic screening could lead to an era of personalised nutritional advice, with people advised to follow diets specifically tailored to their own biology. We also find out how technology is transforming food packaging, and what impact cryopreservation could have on the way we store our food.
Finally, we find out how EU researchers are developing ways to enhance the healthy ingredients found in foods, making them even better for us.
Rice, olives, tomatoes – healthy foods are getting a boost as scientists find ways to enhance ingredients that can keep the doctor away.
Cryopreservation, in which organic material is stored at extremely low temperatures, may not yet have reached the science fiction dream of placing people in suspended animation, but technology inspired by hard-to-freeze fish is helping make it an effective way of preserving genetic plant material for future use.
Responsive food packets could warn us when frozen food has got too warm, or even if meat has gone off, and they could be on supermarket shelves within the next few years.
‘I would like to show that when one uses novel concepts or thinks outside the box, there is no limit to yield ... the limit is just in our head,’ according to Professor Dani Zamir from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
What one person eats for optimum health may differ from the next, and scientists are working out how our genetic makeup is responsible.